Even if it sounds like I’m bragging, I’ll say it: you have probably heard of me. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve heard my name: Bobby Barton. Or, as I was called for most of last year, President Bobby Barton. Most likely you have some idea of what happened that made it so everybody knew my name. But now that I have a little more spare time, I will tell you the story myself.

Many others have told my story already. At the very start, the headlines on the front page of every newspaper in the world were about me. So many people wanted to tell my story, but I can tell it best. After all, I was the one who lived it.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. I learned a lot of stuff last year. I underlined some words you might not know, and explained them in the glossary at the end.

So here goes. It all started on a sunny day last September.

The long yellow school bus, packed with my third grade class, rolled into Washington, D.C. All of the windows on the bus were open, and the breeze blowing across the tops of our heads felt nice. Everybody was in a great mood.

The school year had just begun a couple of weeks before, and we were already going on an awesome field trip. It was worth waking up extra early to get a head start that day: we were going to see the White House in person, as well as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the National Archives.

The bus rolled to a stop. Mr. Glover, our history teacher, announced, “Boys and girls, please settle down. We have arrived at the National Archives, where our country’s most important documents are kept. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are inside this building. These are the pages that gave birth to our nation, and to this day they give freedom to each and every one of us. Now please follow me off the bus, and walk single file.”

As we headed for the big building with the tall columns in front, my best friend Kevin Sawyer jabbed me with his elbow. “Pretty cool, huh?” said Kevin. “I mean, we’re about to see these things that were written hundreds of years ago! I wonder if anything I’ve written will last that long.”

“Could be,” I replied. “Have you written anything good lately?”

“Just that essay on how I spent my summer vacation,” Kevin answered, staring at the Archives Building, “But I guess that maybe my story about getting a sunburn might not be a big enough deal to build a place like this to keep it in. Oh, well.”

I smiled, and we kept walking.

The main room inside the Archives Building was called the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. It was a big, round room with marble floors and concrete walls. Giant paintings on the walls showed scenes from early America. Display cases along the front of the room held what we had come to see: the pages that our Founding Fathers wrote.